The Count of Five
by LynstHolin
Summary: Draco Malfoy's OCD makes him the perfect person to work in the Ministry's new Crime Scene Analysis department, where he will have to share an office with Auror Harry Potter. DRARRY
1. Chapter 1

This was written for a contest on dA-the requirements were that it be a Drarry fic that includes Theodore Nott, and that Harry or Draco have a major flaw. I also wanted to create a Draco that is the polar opposite of my 'Stray Cat' Draco.

...

The first thing Draco Malfoy did when he reached his office at the Ministry of Magic was polish the name-plates on the door, even though there weren't any fingerprints on them. One said his name, one said 'Theodore Nott,' and a third, larger one said 'Crime Scene Analysis.' He counted to five, then stepped over the threshold and crossed over to his desk in exactly five even steps.

Before sitting down, he ran his hands over his hair to make sure it was neat, even though it was far too short to get mussed. He straightened his already straight collar, and, when he sat, pulled the back of his robes tight so they wouldn't wrinkle up when he sat.

HIs desk was very neat, but he fussed with it anyway, squaring the sheets of parchments that filled the two baskets marked In and Out. He sharpened five quills, and lined them up on his desk next to his inkwell and blotter, taking care that they were all exactly the same length. A tiny dustpan and hand-broom were used to sweep up the quill shavings, which were then Scourgified into oblivion.

His office mate arrived. Theodore Nott was carrying an armload of parchments and photographs, which he dumped on Draco's desk. "We're going to be staying late tonight, I think."

Draco shrugged. "That's fine with me." He gave a quick, cursory glance to each parchment and sorted them into piles before he seriously got to work.

"Knock, knock." Draco looked up from his work to see Harry Potter standing in the doorway, wearing faded jeans and a hoodie. "Things are even madder than we thought. Shacklebolt wants you two to work in my office with me to make things more efficient."

Theo frowned. "I like my office. It's quiet here."

"Sorry. Orders from the top. Here, I'll help you carry that. There's tons more in my office."

Potter's office was on the same floor but on the opposite side of the Ministry building, so there was plenty of time to discuss what was going on. "What's happened?" Theo asked Harry. He was half a head taller than Potter, but weighed only half as much; he moved in an odd, hunch-backed lope.

Harry ran his hands through his hair, making it even more of a mess than usual. "What _hasn't_ happened. We're no longer looking for one person. It's definitely a group. Shacklebolt is calling them the Brixton Butchers, since that's where most of their crimes are committed. They're trying to learn how to make Horcruxes, and they're killing Muggles to do it. But they also seem to be killing for fun, too. The amount of information that you need to sift through is enormous. I'm surprised you've lasted a month at this job, Malfoy. The six people who did it before you didn't last more than a week."

"I like it. It keeps my mind busy," Draco said.

"I've been told that Muggles use computers to do what he does," said Theo, "but any computer brought in the Ministry just spontaneously combusts."

"Shacklebolt says he's pleased with the work you two have been doing. He says in the two months since the CSA was formed, the number of dark wizards that have been arrested have doubled. And you're just two people!" Harry said.

"The CSA was mostly Nott's idea." Draco said. He winced when he saw Harry's office. "What a pigsty!" Every possible surface was covered with a scree of loose parchment, books, folders, photographs, and chewed up quills. Theo gave the blond an amused look as he paused for a count of five on the threshold.

"I never have time to clean up. Sorry. You two can work here." Harry swept a table clean with his arms, sending a wave of flotsam to the floor.

"You're going to give Malfoy a fit of the vapors if you keep that up."

"Stuff it, Nott," Draco said, with a hint of a smile. He inspected at the chairs by the table. "_Accio_ broom and dustpan and feather duster."

"Is he always like this?" Harry asked Theo.

"Trust me, this is only the beginning."

When the work space was to his liking, Draco sat down (after his hair-collar-robes routine) and precisely lined up his quills, inkwell, and blotter. Harry dropped of load of parchment on top of what Draco already had put on the table, and Draco made a squawking noise. "You can't just put it all in one great pile, Potter! It has to be sorted."

"Oh. Sorry."

It took half an hour for Draco to organize things. He set to work poring over parchments and photos. Each documented crime scene was numbered, and he wrote the details contained in the photos and reports down in a correspondingly numbered book . A photo of a murdered Muggle showed cigar butts next to the victim's feet, and an opened window. Another showed a dead witch laying in a pool of water, a brush tangled in her hair. Every little thing was entered in Draco's books.

"You really had to write down that there was one carpet slipper found on the scene?" Harry had been reading over Draco's shoulder.

Startled, Draco jumped, leaving a smear of ink on the page he was writing on. He grabbed his blotter to try to fix the damage. "Look what you made me do, Potter! And, yes, I did. You never know what might help break the case. We were able to identify the wizard who was responsible for turning dogs into jackals by the brand of dog treats he used to feed them the Canafera potion."

Draco opened another, much larger book. He turned to the first blank page and wrote 'Carpet Slippers' at the top. Underneath, he wrote, '1 found, maroon and forest green Case#1168-C.'

The whole time, Theo just sat with his back to the other men and stared out the window, wringing his long-fingered hands. "What are you supposed to be doing?" Harry asked him.

"Malfoy is the details man. I'm the big picture man. I look at the details he compiles and try to come up with patterns."

"And that works?"

"I was able to predict that the Mad Inflator was going to try to turn a Muggle into a dirigible in the middle of Harrod's on Christmas Eve Day."

"That was your work? We managed to get him before he even had his wand out. So you're working right now?"

Theo gave Harry a tight smile, exposing his buck teeth. "I was until you started asking questions."

A good-looking auburn man rapped on the doorframe. "Are you ready, _mon cher_?"

"I am. Nott, Malfoy, I'm having a quick lunch date with my boyfriend, all right? I'll be back in half an hour." Draco looked surprised for a moment, but he quickly buried his nose in his work again.

...

Draco Flooed home a little after eight, just as dinner was served. He and his parents sat together at one end of the enormous dining room table. Lucius gave him an impatient look as he went through his pre-sitting routine: hair, collar, back of robes. A house elf offered to fill his plate, but Draco insisted on doing it himself, making sure that the different kinds of food didn't touch each other. He counted to five, then picked up a fork. He counted to five and picked up a bite of food. There was another five-count before he put the food in his mouth. Then he set the fork down on his plate as he swallowed. "One-two-three-four-five," he said softly.

Lucius slammed his fist down on the table, making plates jump and wine-glasses slosh. "Stop that nonsense right now, Draco! I've told you how aggravating it is." He grabbed Draco's fork and put it in his hand, roughly closing Draco's fingers over it. "Just _eat_."

Draco sat unmoving for a moment. He dipped the fork into a pile of broccoli, but his hand started to shake so much, he couldn't pick any food up. He lifted his fork, but his father batted his hand down before he could start counting.

"Lucius, he'll outgrow it! It's just a phase," Narcissa said pleadingly.

"He's twenty-one years old. It's time he stopped this childishness."

Draco's eyes widened and darted back and forth. A vein pulsed on his left temple, and his breathing quickened. His mouth wobbled. Throwing the fork on his plate, he stood up abruptly. "I've had enough to eat." He strode from the room, waiting until he was out of his father's line of sight until he started counting his steps. When he got to the stairs, he put his right foot on the first step, and precisely placed his left next to it. He counted to five, then repeated the process, all the way to the top. By the time he reached his room, he was calm again. He stood in front of his door and counted, then crossed over to his wardrobe in five even steps. He pulled his robes off and carefully put them on a hanger, making sure they draped in a way that wouldn't cause creases. He pulled on paisley silk pajamas, counting to five in between putting on the bottoms and the top. He walked to a set of French doors in two sets of five even steps, and drew the white curtains open. "One, two, three, four..." Draco started counting the stars in the winter sky.

...

Harry saw Draco and Theo arrive at the crime scene. "It's another attempt at making a Horcrux. It's not pretty," he said to them grimly.

Hermione was waving her wand slowly. "A woman. Muggle. Not young. That's all I'm getting. I'll call our Scotland Yard liaison."

Draco swallowed hard when he saw what remained of the victim. As he photographed the scene, he counted under his breath. In between each shot, he touched his nose and his chin. Everything was captured by the camera: the victim, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, every item in the room, no matter how small.

Hermione's brows drew together as she watched Draco pause in his work to pat down his hair for the seventh time. "Has he always been like this?" she asked Theo, who was standing in a corner alone, absorbing the gestalt of the scene.

"It started sixth year."

"There's Muggle medicine that could help him."

Theo shrugged and walked away from her.

...

A bottle of champagne and three glasses floated into Harry's office. "Drinks on the job?" Theo asked. "This is another Ministry reform I whole-heartedly support."

Harry grinned. "It's a gift from Shacklebolt. Thanks to your good work, we caught all seven of the Brixton Butchers. Right now, they're all in separate interrogation rooms incriminating one another. Azkaban's getting some more permanent residents."

The cork popped out of the bottle, hitting the ceiling and knocking out a light. The bottle tipped to fill the glasses. Draco grabbed his out of the air and, after a count of five, took a sip. "So we'll be moving back to our office, then?"

"I suppose. Let's finish this bubbly off first, though."

Quite a lot of Draco and Theo's things had ended up in Harry's office during the time they'd been working there, so Harry loaded up a rolling chair with boxes and followed behind the two as they headed for the other end of the Ministry. There was a hubbub going on, and the three found their way blocked by a crowd of milling wizards. The sounds of hammers and chanting could be heard over the babble.

Theo grabbed Arthur Weasley by the arm. "What on earth is going on?"

"There was an escape from the Magical Creatures department."

"Is it dangerous?"

"In a way. Someone crossed termites with flobberworms, and they're eating the Ministry. But they're contained right now."

"Termites and flobberworms? Is Rubeus Hagrid at it again?" Draco drawled.

"Malfoy, Hagrid is my good friend and... oh, you're right. That sounds _exactly _like something he'd do." The two former rivals laughed together.

"It looks like we're stuck in your office for a little longer, Potter," Theo said.

...

The last bit of parchment went into Draco's Out basket. He sat a moment, knees bouncing. He got up and headed for Harry's desk, which was elbow deep in debris. Harry, who was leaning back in his chair reading a trashy novel with his big, boot-clad feet up on a coffee table, watched Draco curiously as the blond began sorting the mess. Four layers down, Draco came across a green-furred sandwich in a plastic bag. "Ugh!"

"I wondered where that went."

Harry's desk was cleaned and organized in two hours. Draco looked around the room.

"You could just do like Nott and go home for the day, you know," Harry said.

Draco made a face. "I don't want to." He started yanking the drawers out of a filing cabinet. "How do you ever find anything in here?"

"I don't, really."

"Alphabetizing. It's a useful skill."

...

Draco's Inbox was empty by ten in the morning, and the office was perfectly clean and neat. He took out an emery board and went to work on his fingernails, even though they were about as short as they could possibly be. Harry frowned at the sight of blood on one of Draco's fingertips. He reached behind and to his right, knocking some books off a shelf. "Oops."

Draco leapt from his chair and picked the books up, making sure to arrange them by subject and author. Settling back down on his chair, he commanded, "Gilly, haircut!" A house elf appeared with scissors, a razor, a comb, and a glass of water.

"A haircut? You don't have any hair to cut." Harry looked amused.

The house elf hopped up on the table, and, after wetting his master's hair down, tried the scissors, to no effect. Gilly took the razor and shaved up the back of Draco's neck and around his ears, then cleaned the tiny bits of loose hair away with a Vanishing charm. Draco was nearly bald now, which made his clear grey eyes look impossibly large in his face.

"You look like a baby bird," Harry said.

"At least I don't look like a cat coughed a furball up on my head."

Laughing, Harry reached up and touched his tousled hair. "Is it really that bad?"

"There's this invention called a comb. You should learn how to use one." Draco grabbed the comb Gilly had brought and advanced on Harry.

"Is this going to hurt?"

"Possibly." Draco started running the comb through Harry's black locks, then paused a moment.

"What?"

"I always thought your hair would be like straw, but it's quite soft, really." Draco started combing again.

Harry's eyelids lowered. "Mmm. Doesn't hurt at all, actually. You're good at that." He had a look on his face like a dog having its belly scratched.

Theo paused in the doorway, raised an eyebrow, then backed away quietly.

...

Harry looked up as Draco paused in front of his office door. The blond was interrupted in his counting by a drifting shoal of pink hearts. "This place has gone mad!" One heart floated into his nose, provoking a sneezing fit.

"You should have seen what it was like the month before Christmas. Someone insisted on a manger scene complete with live animals. People tend to go to extremes around holidays in this place. How do you like your office renovations?"

"Not bad. It stills reeks of flobberworm, though." Draco straightened up the room, then pulled a comb out of his robes and set to work on Harry. "And the secretary we were assigned does nothing but fret about not having a date for Valentine's Day. Nott is threatening to sew her mouth shut."

"It's very, very important to have a date on Valentine's Day, you know. A matter of life and death."

"Apparently. I suppose you've got a date with Alain."

"He's moved back to Montreux."

"Oh. Sorry." Draco stroked the comb through Harry's thick tresses. "Perhaps I could set you up with my secretary so she'll stop her moaning."

"_She_. Not my type. You must have a date, being a good-looking bloke."

"That sounds suspiciously like a chat-up line."

Harry tilted his head up so he could look at Draco's face. "Do you want it to be?"

"You go out with _me_?"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm me, and you're you, and we have a history."

"History is history. Today is today."

"Was that supposed to be profound, Potter?"

"Maybe? But really, why not go out with me?"

"Why would _you_ want to go out with _me_?"

"As I've said, you're good-looking, in a Lord-of-the-manor sort of way. And when you do that thing with your robes before you sit down, I can see what a nice bottom you have."

The comment surprised a bark of laughter out of Draco. "Sexual harassment on the job, Potter! But, honestly, no one wants to date me anymore. I was attractive when I was a git, but now that I'm just half-mad..."

"Hermione told me that those things that you do, the counting and all that, they keep you sane."

Draco's hands stilled, and he looked up at the ceiling. "A very intelligent woman, that Granger." He started combing again, and Harry's green eyes went half-closed with pleasure.

"Come on, you can't tell me you still come here to play with my hair just because you can't find anything else to do."

A curly-haired Cupid draped in pink satin winged into the room, loosing tiny arrows that lodged in the walls. Draco swore as he dodged a feathered missile. "It shoots real arrows—what a bloody wonderful idea!"

Harry pulled his wand out and used a mild shocking hex; the Cupid screeched and flew from the room so fast, he shed half of his wing-feathers. "So, Valentine's Day. Is it a date?"

"You've seen what I do when I eat. You want to be seen in public with me when I do that?"

"It doesn't bother me."

"Valentine's Day is tomorrow. You'll never get a reservation for a decent restaurant that late."

Harry laughed. "I'm the Boy Who Lived, remember? I don't need reservations."

"I'm a Malfoy, and I expect it to be a very good restaurant." Draco had his hands on his hips and a smile on his lips.

"Do you like seafood? How about the Kraken House?"

"That'll do."

"Are you two done?" Theo called from the doorway. "We actually have some work to do. Someone has turned an entire nursery's worth of tots into—" A Cupid whizzed past him, tweaking his nose. "Into _these_. Come on, Malfoy, Potter, help me catch him!"

Draco grabbed for the Cupid, but only ended up ripping off a handful of pink satin. Harry yelped and ducked as an arrow creased the top of his left ear. The Cupid hovered up by the ceiling, shooting more arrows. The three men ended up taking shelter under the table together until they were rescued by Hermione. During it all, Draco didn't need to count anything at all. It was a start.


	2. Chapter 2

This story now has a sequel, "The Count of Six." You can find it on my profile. Here's a little teaser:

Panicked breathing. The squeaking of ropes. The creak of a board. "One-two-three-four-five-one-two-three-four-five-one-two-three-four-five." The breathing quickened at the sound of footsteps above, moving toward the cellar door. The door opened and the candles were lit. Draco winced and shut his eyes tight.

"Here he is, just as I described," the woman said.


End file.
